Rev vs. AJAX...Or Web-Aware Apps vs. Web Apps

Judy Perry jperryl at ecs.fullerton.edu
Sat Oct 15 03:22:09 EDT 2005


On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> The languages we bring to the table can always be replaced.  But can our
> experience/talents/creativity?

Okay, Richard, you trolled me back into the gym.

I honestly was going to try to just sit back and let everybody think that
EITHER as a pointey-headed snob OR a whatever, that I'd been properly
shown the errors of my ways... but then, you make my point precisely:

This is EXACTLY what I mean by my opposition to wizards-this, themes-that.

I won't bore you all with the numerous psychological studies done on the
effects of "attractiveness", that even infants will go for the pretty over
the substantive; that Stanford has for a number of years been exploring
the effects of the computer as a persuasive agent such that it's been
found that human beings instinctively trust whatever a computer gives them
as truth, honesty, QUALITY, and bias-free when compared to comparable
offerings from  a fellow human being.  And that software developers with a
conscious  really aught to take a moment to think about how they may well
be advancing the computer as a persuasive agent.  And that, increasingly,
perhaps because of the very computer technologies we all espouse and
advance, the general public is increasingly unable to make the distinction
between information and knowledge, that they confuse the two and see them
as one: the information that is presented as sound-bytes and factoids
presented in an isolated vacuum...

That this is a problem.

It is well and fine to state that educators should do more to prepare
their students in terms of current and real-world skills (as I DO with
respect to educators and computer technologies).  It is another to mock
altogether the role of the university as an entity that prepares people
not only for today, but for the tomorrow that doesn't yet exist.

I have begun reading Paul Goodman's 1962 _The Community of Scholars_.  He
makes a number of cogent points and predictions (now reality) regarding
higher education, particularly in the U.S.

Teaching people "job skills", in computer science, means giving them MS
certification.  As you say, Richard, what does this really buy them?

(and, of course, this isn't really directed at Richard, but he dragged me
back in...)

It's fine if all we want to do is get them jobs now.  But, who will
design the language(s) of tomorrow?  Not universities.  And not software
developers who justify the dumbing-down of users of computer technologies.

These concepts are all-but incomprehensible to likely most of the people
on this list, people for whom the computer is an understood entity.  But
for everyone else, computer technologies are akin to magic -- the god who
is suddenly, incomprehensibly, unhappy (as when a computer crashes); one
who is  suddenly incooperative when we seek its divine information (such
as how to use the different search engines).

The more that we actively discourage 'thinking outside of the box' (or
even thinking at all), the more we damn ourselves to the present and its
limitations.

Wearing flame-retardant armour...

Judy




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